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Lawsuits Put Wine Country Fracking Leases In Limbo

May 10, 2013 | Filed under Featured Articles | Posted by

Two year’s worth of oil and gas exploration leases to approximately 20,000 acres of federal land in Monterey, San Benito and Joaquin Counties have been thrust into limbo by two lawsuits — one of  which has been a victory so far for the environmental groups which filed the litigation.

At least 6,150 of those acres are in or near the Lockwood and San Ardo vineyard areas of Southern Monterey County.

Threats of ground water contamination, excessive water usage and other environmental effects have also brought widespread condemnation of the leases by county water officials, wineries, vineyards, ag interests and others in the areas that could be impacted.

Previous Wine Industry Insight coverage of the lease process can be found here: Fracking Rights Auctioned Off In Monterey Wine Country and here: Buyers, Prices For Monterey, San Benito & Fresno County Oil/Gas/Fracking.

The main thrust of the lawsuits — brought by the Sierra Club and The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) — have challenged the validity of environmental assessments conducted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM is part of the U.S. Department of Interior. The lawsuits are being heard in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division. An excellent overview of fracking in California can be found at this link.

Wine Executive News subscribers please click here to read the complete 900-word article.

Also In This Article:

  • FAULTY BLM LOGIC, LACK OF AUTHORITY?
  • JUDGE GRANTS ENVIRONMENTALISTS’ MAIN CONTENTION
  • COURT ASKS PARTIES FOR SPECIFIC REMEDY IN FIRST CASE
  • BLM CANCELS MAY 22 LEASE SALES
  • SECOND LAWSUIT WOULD INVALIDATE DEC 2012  LEASE SALES

PREVIOUS WINE INDUSTRY INSIGHT COVERAGE

PLEASE NOTE: A server crash caused by an attempted unauthorized intrusion, resulted in several lost images, photos and maps that accompany our articles, below.  We’re working to find off-line originals to re-upload for you. Our sincere apologies. The attempted intrusions stole no data, but vandalized a few of the files. Kind of like having your car keyed but not stolen or broken into.

NEWS FETCH COVERAGE OF FRACKING

The following links are search results c0ntaining fracking references contained in issues of Wine Industry Insight’s News Fetch daily news briefing.


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